The Background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Phase-change materials have been proposed for use in memory devices. Phase-change materials may be electrically programmed between various states. These states range from fully amorphous to fully crystalline. In a fully crystalline state, the phase-change material exhibits a low resistance. In a fully amorphous state, the phase-change material exhibits a high resistance. Phase-change materials may be used as binary memories by varying the resistance of the phase-change material.
Random access memory (RAM) utilizing phase-change materials has competed unfavorably against other memory technologies, such as flash memory. This is because flash memory typically has a density that is 2-4 times greater than the densest phase-change memory.